Why are backflips so overhyped?

[RafaelAstro]

This is just my opinion, but I don't understand the hype. Yes, it's a cool and difficult move, but it's pretty old by now and has been overperformed in exhibitions. The only difference is that now you can do it in your programs without penalties, but it doesn’t give you any extra points and has nothing to do with skating skills or performance, in my opinion.
Now that skaters are free to include it in their programs, it has become overused in just a few seasons. These types of moves make figure skating feel more like acrobatics on ice rather than actual figure skating, and I’ve noticed that people who do this often lack connection with the audience or real choreography.

 

[dorispulaski]

Check Ilia's back flip to a one foot landing with a nice running edge. That is not old hat.

 

[Diana Delafield]

This is just my opinion, but I don't understand the hype. Yes, it's a cool and difficult move, but it's pretty old by now and has been overperformed in exhibitions. The only difference is that now you can do it in your programs without penalties, but it doesn’t give you any extra points and has nothing to do with skating skills or performance, in my opinion.
Now that skaters are free to include it in their programs, it has become overused in just a few seasons. These types of moves make figure skating feel more like acrobatics on ice rather than actual figure skating, and I’ve noticed that people who do this often lack connection with the audience or real choreography.

I always feel it's an irrelevant intrusion in a program, and the long set-up required breaks the flow of the skating. (I don't even like Deanna and Max's version: Stop. Hike one foot way up so he can grab your boot, and shove off his shoulders like you're both escaping pursuit over a wall. Flip. Resume program.) Daring, yes, but pointless in both senses.

I did see one appropriate backflip once by one skater in a club show just last year -- a teenager skating an exuberant program to "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy" from "South Pacific". She did a backflip, a couple of cartwheels, and a few other gymnastics moves, and they fit the music and her theme perfectly. So *maybe* it could fit in a happy-mood competition program to upbeat music.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

This is just my opinion, but I don't understand the hype. Yes, it's a cool and difficult move, but it's pretty old by now and has been overperformed in exhibitions. The only difference is that now you can do it in your programs without penalties, but it doesn’t give you any extra points and has nothing to do with skating skills or performance, in my opinion.
Now that skaters are free to include it in their programs, it has become overused in just a few seasons. These types of moves make figure skating feel more like acrobatics on ice rather than actual figure skating, and I’ve noticed that people who do this often lack connection with the audience or real choreography.

In my opinion, it was relevant in Adam Siao Him Fa's first season with backflip, precisely because the penalty was making it a tribute to compatriot Surya Bonaly. It wasn't bringing anything to the program, it was a symbol (a welcome one in my viewpoint). Surya Bonaly would do it somehow in opposition with her mother and part of the Figure Skating world, from what I understand, precisely because there was a penalty, and because she was also excelling in Tumbling, so the move was natural to her. This was very personal of course.
Now that there's no penalty to it, I don't see the point except, from what I could see, exhibiting poor taste; maybe, for Adam Siao Him Fa, "keeping up with the Joneses"?

 

[Mathman]

These types of moves make figure skating feel more like acrobatics on ice rather than actual figure skating,...

I think that this sentence answers the question of why the iSU is suddenly so pleased with moves like this. The powers that be are slowly but surely transforming the sport into skateboarding, skiing ariels, doing tricks on dirt bikes, and performing to teenage popular music.

The goal is to attract a younger audience to the sport -- quick, before us old codgers and biddies die out.

 

[TallyT]

Because the current pr pet does them, they make for a good 20 second byte, and therefore the Tiktoky fangurls and fanbois being chased for clicks think they're cool.

(I am over them and cartwheels. Can you tell.)

 

[RafaelAstro]

Because the current pr pet does them, they make for a good 20 second byte, and therefore the Tiktoky fangurls and fanbois being chased for clicks think they're cool.

(I am over them and cartwheels. Can you tell.)

I think the ISU is at fault for promoting this now when they literally banned it for decades for a good reason.

 

[frompolandwithlove]

Because ISU thinks that going viral is what will save the sport, probably. Backflips look daring and the audience goes "woooo!" = easy clicks on youtube.
It was fun when Adam did it, precisely because it was illegal back then (and it kind of worked with the vibe of his program). But I agree that now, when backflips are allowed, they rarely add anything to the program (more often just disrupt the rhytm) and are mostly sloppy. I guess we are rebranding sloppiness as athleticism.
I also don't buy the whole "pushing the sport forward" rhetoric, I'd rather say it's "pushing the sport away" (from what it's supposed to be).

 

[ladyjane]

Still, the landing on one leg with a running edge does excite me....not the ugly ones which we see all the time now.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

Check Ilia's back flip to a one foot landing with a nice running edge. That is not old hat.

Actually it is, Ryan Bradley did it on one foot, and he's the one that taught it to Ilia.

 

[dorispulaski]

Actually, Surya Bonaly did a back flip with a one foot landing first in 1998 in Nagano, but the landing was not as nice as Ilia's. And the stunt done that way is not often seen, hence not "old hat."

1.2M views · 25K reactions | Landing a backflip on one blade 😱 Surya Bonaly performed this in Nagano 1998 and she remains the only athlete to perform this move in an Olympic Competition ✨ | TNT Sports

Landing a backflip on one blade 😱 Surya Bonaly performed this in Nagano 1998 and she remains the only athlete to perform this move in an Olympic Competition ✨

www.facebook.com

The back flip with the two footed landing was first done in competition by Terry Kubicka a long time ago in 1976. It is " old hat."

Terry Kubicka - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[noskates]

Have you ever tried one?

 

[Mathman]

Because the current pr pet does them, they make for a good 20 second byte, and therefore the Tiktoky fangurls and fanbois being chased for clicks think they're cool.

Do you mean Ilia Malinin? I agree with @frompolandwithlove that the credit should go to Adam Siao Him Fa, that sexy bad boy. He did it when it was illegal and right in the judges' faces, like Surya Bonaly! Oh those French!

 

[skatingguy]

Maybe we're just too jaded.

https://www.another site.com/r/tennis/comments/1qzyh6v/llia_malinin_on_novak_djokovic_watching_his/

 

[frompolandwithlove]

Check Ilia's back flip to a one foot landing with a nice running edge. That is not old hat.

Do we have a video? I don't think I've seen a single backflip with a nice running edge from anyone, except from maybe Surya

 

[Blades of Passion]

Surya Bonaly did a back flip with a one foot landing first in 1998 in Nagano, but the landing was not as nice as Ilia's.

Bonaly's back flip is FAR superior to Ilia's. She got more distance on it and her form is so much better. Ilia's leg is very bent while doing the move. Ilia's landing isn't better either, not sure why you're saying that? Bonaly had more control and again better form on her landing, being able to show a high leg extension, full elongation through the arms and hands, and then an entire additional pose afterward while holding the edge.

 

[Ic3Rabbit]

Actually, Surya Bonaly did a back flip with a one foot landing first in 1998 in Nagano, but the landing was not as nice as Ilia's. And the stunt done that way is not often seen, hence not "old hat."

1.2M views · 25K reactions | Landing a backflip on one blade 😱 Surya Bonaly performed this in Nagano 1998 and she remains the only athlete to perform this move in an Olympic Competition ✨ | TNT Sports

Landing a backflip on one blade 😱 Surya Bonaly performed this in Nagano 1998 and she remains the only athlete to perform this move in an Olympic Competition ✨

www.facebook.com

The back flip with the two footed landing was first done in competition by Terry Kubicka a long time ago in 1976. It is " old hat."

Terry Kubicka - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The point was, he did it before Ilia and taught it to him.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Have you ever tried one?

I did them (quite badly) when I was on my university's gymnastics team as a teenager, but no way would I try one on the ice at any age.

Well, maybe with the harness. Just to see what it feels like.

 

[Magill]

Do you mean Ilia Malinin? I agree with @frompolandwithlove that the credit should go to Adam Siao Him Fa, that sexy bad boy. He did it when it was illegal and right in the judges' faces, like Surya Bonaly! Oh those French!

The credit should go to Adam but somehow Ilia is using it and taking it all to himself, and that is not cool.
But even the backflip itself, with Adam it was not hyped, and that's why it could be seen as cool because it had an air of rebellion and authenticity. With Ilia TPTB and PR agents got behind it and it is being hyped, but that's why it is not cool anymore, lol.
Backflips belong to a different aesthetics. It is just like with any subculture. Mainstream guys think they will look cool when they adopt it but once they do, the real guys turn their back on the gimmick and invent a new forbidden one.... and that's how it goes. The problem with backflip on skates is that deprived of its illegal charm and once it is not a rarity anymore, it is, frankly speaking .... ugly.
But the way Ilia took away the pleasure of performing the first backflip on the Olympic ice after it's been allowed again from the one who actually forced ISU to make it legal.... no, that's not cool.

 

[TallyT]

Do you mean Ilia Malinin? I agree with @frompolandwithlove that the credit should go to Adam Siao Him Fa, that sexy bad boy. He did it when it was illegal and right in the judges' faces, like Surya Bonaly! Oh those French!

Yes the (lack of) credit for bringing them back to inflict us should go to Siao Him Fa and I won't forgive him soon either, but that didn't bring the ubiquity.